Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/181

Rh why shouldn't we want to grab them and carry them off—the same as all of you originally did?"

"Ah, not quite the same," Hugh smiled—"that I will say for you!"

"Yes, you stick it on now—you have got an eye for the rise in values. But I grant you your unearned increment, and you ought to be mighty glad that, to such a tune, I'll pay it you."

Our young man kept, during a moment's thought, his eyes on his companion, and then resumed with all intensity and candour: "You may easily, Mr. Bender, be too much for me—as you appear too much for far greater people. But may I ask you, very earnestly, for your word on this, as to any case in which that happens—that when precious things, things we are to lose here, are knocked down to you, you'll let us at least take leave of them, let us have a sight of them in London, before they're borne off?"

Mr. Bender's big face fell almost with a crash. "Hand them over, you mean, to the sandwichmen on Bond Street?"

"To one or other of the placard and poster men—I don't insist on the inserted human